Brownback denounces Westboro's Conn. picketing

During an end of the year interview, Gov. Sam Brownback discussed his approach to the impending gun control debate.

Following the mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, Gov. Sam Brownback expressed remorse Thursday that a Topeka church group chooses to use funerals to espouse anti-gay rhetoric.

"It's horrible. I wish they were not," the governor said in an interview. "This isn't the first time."

Supporters of Westboro Baptist Church, a fundamentalist Christian congregation, vowed to picket in Connecticut in the aftermath of the Dec. 14 rampage in which 26 people were shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Twenty victims were ages 6 and 7.

The church didn’t protest Wednesday’s service for school principal Dawn Hochsprung, despite a pledge to do so to object to a Connecticut law allowing same-sex marriage.

Westboro Baptist members have picketed funerals for years, especially of U.S. service members, arguing death and destruction were God's answer to the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality. The church won a U.S. Supreme Court case in 2011 affirming their First Amendment right to picket.

Steve Drain, spokesman with the church, said he wouldn't disclose which funerals church members intended to picket in Connecticut due to safety concerns. People are searching motel parking lots for vehicles with Kansas license plates in an attempt to locate members of the church, Drain said.

"We're going to get to as many of those high-profile funerals as we can," Drain said. "We are telling the people of the world you ought not be mourning the loss of those children or those cops. What you ought to be mourning is our sins."

His reference to law enforcement officers was tied to Sunday's fatal shooting of Topeka police officers Cpl. David Gogian and officer Jeff Atherly. Both died in the line of duty from wounds sustained outside a Topeka grocery store. The shooter later was killed by law enforcement personnel.

On Wednesday, Brownback ordered flags in Shawnee County flown at half-staff from sunup to sundown Friday and Saturday in honor of Gogian and Atherly.

The Republican governor also urged Kansans to observe a moment of silence at 9:30 a.m. Friday in remembrance of those lost in the shooting in Connecticut.

"I would like to send my deepest sympathy to the family and friends of the victims of this senseless crime," Brownback said of the Connecticut violence.

In an interview with The Topeka Capital-Journal, Brownback said the Kansas and national debate regarding gun violence shouldn't begin with well-worn demand for reforms certain to create controversy.

"If you immediately go to, 'OK, this is about the gun control issue,' you're going to get a stale discussion that we've had," Brownback said. "Whereas, you could go to a mental health discussion."

Brownback said he wouldn’t waver from his commitment to the constitutional right to bear arms, but was drawn to the argument that mental health services had to be at the forefront of a national solution.

"I've done compromises with people on the left, right and in between," he said. "You have to start off not going to the heat-seeking issues right at the outset. Is there something here we can discuss that we have some common ground? I think the place to go is on the mental health discussion."